
Book A"^ r* 9: 

M(]:si:nti:I) iiv 



DR. GARTH ^,„^:::£^^ 



THE 



KITKAT POET 

1661-1718 



HARVEY GUSHING, M.D. 

Reprinteairom 

The Johns Hopkins Hospital Bllletin 

January 

1906 



'Zi)t. Bora (Sfafttmorc (precd 

THE FRIEDENWALD COMPANY 
BALTIMORE, MD., U. S. A. 

1906 






i"' 



2'}-'-'- 



1 



/^i>^ 




FROM JACOB TONSON'S MEZZOTINT REPHODUCTIONS OF KNELLER'S PORTRAITS OF THE KIT-KAT CLUB MEMBERS. 



DR. GARTH: THE KIT-KAT POET^ 

(1661-1718.) 
By Harvey Gushing, M. D. 

IN the reign of Queen Anne, a ijasty-cook, one Christopher 
or Kit for short, ' immortal made by his pyes,' kept a 
tavern near Temple Bar at the Sign of the Cat and Fiddle. 
Here was wont to gather a group of the most distinguished 
men of the time, the patriots that saved Britain, according to 
the opinion of one who in the succeeding generation bore the 
name of not the least illustrious of them; leaders of the 
fashionable world, noblemen, poets, statesmen, soldiers; all 
fine gentlemen, all earnest Whigs, firmly sworn to support the 
Protestant succession in the house of Hanover. Of this 
famous club there were first and last some forty-eight mem- 
bers, including the great Marlborough, Eobert Walpole, Go- 
dolphin, and Halifax, Addison and Steele, Kneller the artist, 
and Vanbrugh the builder of Blenheim, Jacob Tonson the 
famous book-seller — Pope's left leg'd Jacob — and many more 
besides the subject of this sketch, the popular, the generous, 
the companionable Garth. 

Mary Pierrepont, the daughter of Lord Kingston, one of 
the noblemen who helped to make up this distinguished co- 
terie, was during her childhood an object of her father's 
special pride and fondness, and the following incident which 
in later years she loved to recall has been thus related by her 
granddaughter. " One day at a meeting to choose toasts for 



* Read at a Meeting of the Johns Hopkins Hospital Historical 
Club, December 12, 1904. 

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the year, a whim seized liim to nominate her, then not eight 
years old/ a candidate, alleging that she was far prettier than 
any lady on the list. The other members demurred because 
the rules of the club forbade them to elect a beauty whom 
they had never seen. ' Then you shall see her/ cried he ; 
and in the gaiety of the moment sent orders home to have her 
finely dressed, and brought to him at the tavern; where she 
was received with acclamations, her claim unanimously allowed, 
her health drunk by every one present, and lier name engraved 
in due form on a drinking glass. The company consisting of 
some of the most eminent men in England, she went from 
the lap of one poet or patriot or statesman to the arms of 
another, was feasted with sweet-meats, overwhelmed with 
caresses, and," Lady Louisa Stewart adds with a touch of 
irony, " what perhaps already pleased her better than either, 
heard her wit and beauty loudly extolled on every side. 
Pleasure, she said, was too poor a word to express her sensa- 
tions; they amounted to ecstasy; never again throughout her 
whole future life, did she pass so happy a day." 

It is pleasing to think that Samuel Garth, the single medi- 
cal member of the club, may have participated in this scene, 
and that the child toast, whom he, unlike some others, con- 
tinued to admire throughout his life, was passed to him in 
turn for a greeting. Little could he then have thought that 
her name, both in medicine and letters, would almost out- 
shine and outlive his own : for the child heroine of this 
episode was none other than the Lady Mary Wortley Monta- 
gue whose gallant struggle against the popular prejudice and 
professional jealousy of the times, in her effort to introduce 



'Lady Mary, according to recent authority (Firth, Dict. of 
Nat. Bioq.), was born in May, 16S9, and the Kit-Kat Club, as 
such, was supposedly not founded until 1703, so that unless the 
Club held meetings, as is quite possible, before the designation 
of Kit-Kats was given them, she was not the child she feigned 
to have been. There is much confusion in regard to dates of 
many events of these times, especially in regard to such hearsay 
ones. 

(2) 



the practice of " ingrafting " against the small-pox, must ever 
make her an object of interest to medical men. 

One may perchance be the more readily excused for plung- 
ing into an incident ahnost in G-arth's middle life, inasmuch 
as there are no details of 

How the dim speck of entity began 

T'extend its recent form, and stretch to man; 

The Dispensary, Canto i. 

and but scant ones of the time intervening until he became 
the popular and well known figure in the metropolis. He 
was born of a good family in Yorkshire,'' probably in 1661 ; 
was at school in the village of Ingleton, a neighborhood of 
most romantic scenery; a student at Peterhouse, the eldest of 
the Cambridge Colleges, where he matriculated July 6, 1676, 
received his B. A. in 1679, and five years later a Masters de- 
gree in arts. These are the bare facts which carry us through 
the first twenty-five years of Garth's life without further ilhi- 
mination from contemporary writings. What induced him 
to take up Physick for his life's work seems not to be known, 
unless it was the direct influence of his college,' and the 
promise for the better in medicine of Sydenham's and Locke's 
recent and great reforms. The colleges, however, at the 
time, had only theoretical instruction in preparation for prac- 
tice, and it was the custom for those very few students, who 
like Garth took their degree in arts before entering upon their 
professional studies, to look elsewhere for opportunities to 
gain practical knowledge. With this object in 1687 he re- 
paired to Leyden, then approaching the zenith of its medical 
fame; and there Garth may possibly have touched elbows in 



"The eldest son ot Wm. Garth of Bowland Forest in the West 
Riding (Dict. of Nat. Biog.). 

""Among the colleges at least one (Peterhouse) had in past 
times a laudable custom of urging her fellows to determine 
themselves in the line of some faculty — going on ' the Law 
line,' or that of Physic, or of Divinity." Wordsworth's Scholae 
Academicae; Some account of the studies at the English Uni- 
versities in the eighteenth century. Cambridge, 1877. 

(3) 



his classes witli the young Dutchman who was destined to 
become the greatest clinician of his time, and whose name 
made that of his university famous to the ends of the earth. 
Four 3'ears later (July 7, 1691) Garth received from his 
alma mater the degree of M.D., and repairing to the me- 
tropolis he was promptly admitted (June 2G, 1693) a Fellow 
of the College of Physicians. 

He must early have distinguished himself, for in the fol- 
lowing year he is said to have delivered the Gulstonian Lec- 
ture, choosing De Respiratione as his text. Although a re- 
quest was made that he should do so, Garth never published 
this discourse, and consequently we have lost the only one of 
his strictly medical writings of which knowledge has come 
down to us. 

A further and still greater compliment was paid the youn,g 
physician three years later, in 1697, when he w-as asked to de- 
liver the annual oration in Latin before the College on St. 
Luke's Day — better Icnown to us as the Harveian Oration.' 

oeatio laudatoria 

in aedibus 

collegii beoalis med. lond. 

17mo die .septembbis 

HABITA 

A. SAM GARTH 

COLL. REG. MED. LOND. .SOC. 

LONDINI 

MDC.XCVII. 

The public tribute that Garth on this occasion paid to 
William III, as well as the tirade, at the close of the oration, 
against the professional qiiackery of the times, proved doubly 
influential in his career; the tribute, an open demonstration 
of his political affiliations, bringing him later on his Knight- 
hood; the tirade, immediately, as it made him the acknowl- 
edged champion of the College of Phj-sicians in a famous 
quarrel : for thus he was led to write the poem on which alone 



' An original paper copy of this oration will be found in the 
Surgeon-General's Library in Washington. 

(4) 



his position among the English poets rests. But to explain 
this I must retrace my steps. 

The Dispensarian Quarrel. 

A CERTAIN lack of sympathy seems always to have ex- 
isted between those privileged to prescribe, and those 
who are restricted by law to the dispensation alone of 
drugs ; and at the time of which we are writing a combination 
of circumstances had fanned latent animosity into a public 
broil. The apothecaries, for the most part, were uneducated 
men and at a somewhat earlier period their relation to the 
community was so loosely controlled that even the grocers and 
pepperers were privileged to dispense drugs and the fact that 
they were legalized, under certain circumstances, to perform 
phlebotomy sufficed to bring them intimately into contact with 
the people as patients. By a charter, granted early in the 
reign of James I, they had been made " Freemen of the 
Mystery of Grocers and Apothecaries of the City of London," 
but soon such remonstrance was raised on all sides against 
their incompetence and such scandal over the adulteration of 
their commodities that in 1617, owing to the intervention of 
one of the few distinguished members of their fraternity, 
Gideon de Laime, the apothecaries were separated by charter 
from their former associates, the grocers. The new grant 
placed them under the control of the College of Physicians 
and to this body was given the power of inspecting their wares 
and regulatin,g their actions. This restraint was far from 
agreeable; its consequences were inevitable. The medical 
therapy of the time was based almost entirely on empiricism 
and the vendors of drugs found therefore tliat it was a simple 
matter to compete with the qualified practitioners. They 
encroached more and more on the physician's province; some 
of thern indeed amassing large fortunes thereby. 

So modern 'Pothecaries taught the art 
By Doctors' hills to play the Doctor's part, 
Bold in the practice of mistaken rules. 
Prescribe, apply, and call their masters fools. 

Essay on Criticism. 
(5) 



Thus Pope, some years later, described the situation as analo- 
gous in a measure to tliat occupied by the critics who had come 
to turn tlieir own arms against the poets from whom they liad 
first learned to write. It has been said by Jeaffreson that the 
doctors of the day knew so little that the apothecaries found 
no difficulty in learning as much : so there is no cause to 
wonder at the story that has come down to us of one of 
Eadcliffe's patients who left him preferring to be treated by a 
well known apothecary. Thus it was not long before the 
apothecaries grew away from the restraint legally imposed 
upon them and regardless of the College began to prescribe 
widely on their own responsibility. Were they threatened with 
punishment, they retaliated by refusing to call in consultation 
the physician who had censured tliem; an action that in many 
eases might have completely ruined his practice. The de- 
pendence that many placed on these consultations, even at a 
later date, is illustrated by the story of Mead, who in the 
morning at Batson's coffee-house, in the evening at Tom's, used 
to receive apothecaries and charge only half-guinea fees for 
prescriptions written without seeing the patient. The situa- 
tion was a most entangled one. The apothecaries defended 
themselves on the ground that they would prescribe and care 
for the poor who could not afford to pay the physician's fees 
in addition to the expense of the drugs; possibly a just claim 
were our beliefs in their charitable pretenses not shaken by a 
knowledge of what were their actual practices. 

In 1687 the first eifort to counteract these abuses was made 
by the College. An edict was unanimously passed by that 
body (July 28, 1687), requiring all the fellows, candidates 
and licentiates to give gratuitous advice to their neighboring 
poor; but the solution of the difficulty was not so simple. It 
was in the first place, as at the present day, difficult to desig- 
nate those who were to be considered " poor," and the practice 
not only led to abuses but was further frustrated by the inor- 
dinately high price immediately put upon all drugs by the 
apothecaries. As the patients had not the wherewithal to get 
them filled, prescriptions were thrown to the winds. Under 
the shadow of benevolence, ton. fliere is said to have lurked 



animosity toward the apothecaries; a spirit which of itself, 
if we are to believe the slander, would certainly have been 
fatal to the successful carrying out of the edict. With the 
view, however, of rendering it more effectual, it was deter- 
mined by a vote in the following year (August 13, 1688), to 
accommodate the laboratory of the College to the purpose of 




OLD COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS, WARWICK LANE, NEAR NEWGATE. 

From a print in the The Gold Headed Cane.* 

Not far from that most celebrated Place 
Where angry Justice shews her awful Face; 

*,; ^ 3t- 'f- ^ 

There stands a Dome, majestick to the sight, 

A golden Globe plac'd high with artful Skill, 
Seems to the distant light, a gilded Pill: 

TJie Dispensary. Ed'.x. I. 



* Especially in Munk's edition there is a full account of the 
various homes and places of meeting of the College from Its 
establishment in 1518. 

(7) 



preparing medicines; the contributors toward the expense were 
themselves to manage the charity. Such a philanthropy 
properly controlled would have effectually done away with the 
abuses of indiscriminate dispensing of drugs, had the apothe- 
caries submitted to it. Not so. They claimed that it was a 
money-making scheme on the part of the physicians who 
aimed thereby merely to undersell them. They even succeeded 
in raising an opposition in the very College itself ° among those 
who at heart and for selfish reasons favored the old system ; so 
that Dispensarians found themselves arrayed against Anti- 
Dispensarians and the design failed of being carried into 
execution. 

At this juncture, with the College in an embroiled state. 
Garth, fresh from the university, appeared at the metropolis; 
he was early admitted a fellow and allied himself unhesitat- 
ingly with the Dispensarian party. Courageously, too, since 
for a youth on foot with little more than his diploma in his 
pocket to take a stand openly against ' affluent tradesmen, 
rolling by in their carriages,' as Jeaffreson puts it, who might 
absolutely injure his prospects, must have required the cour- 
age of conviction. 

In 1694, the College again succeeded in issuing an order 
demanding from all members strict obedience to the edict of 
1688 ; and in the following year ° this new order was presented 



° Perhaps made the more easy as one of the" members, Francis 
Bernard had formerly been an apothecary; but owing to distin- 
guished services had been elevated to the post of assistant physi- 
cian to St. Bartholomew's and also elected to the College in 
1687. He was an able and very scholarly man and, remaining 
loyal to his former guild, must have been a formidable opponent 
to the Dispensarian party. He is the " Horoscope ' of Garth's 
poem. 

°A Short Account of the Proceedings of the College of Physi- 
cians, London, in Relation to the Sick Poor, 1697. See, also, The 
Copy of an Instrument Subscribed by the President, Censors, 
Most of the Elects, Senior Fellows, Candidates, etc., of the Col- 
lege of Physicians in Relation to the Sick Poor. 

' Among the names occur those of Sir Thos. Millington, who 
with Boyle, Wrenn. Willis and others had helped found the 

(8) 



to the city authorities in the hope of gaining their support ; a 
hope unfortunately defeated. Not discouraged, the physicians 
of the Dispensarian party actually raised a subscription 
(December 22, 1G9G) from among those favoring the charity, 
each subscribing ten pounds, the money to be " expended in 
preparing and delivering medicines to the poor at their 
intrinsic value." To disarm the insinuations of their oppo- 
nents and to show that the undertaking had the sanction of a 
College act, the names of all the subscribers, fifty-one in 
number, were appended to a printed sheet which was widely 
distributed.' Thus for a time, there was an actiial distribu- 
tion to the needy of drugs at cost price, and though the 
experiment was perhaps poorly conducted, its philanthropic 
intent was genuine enough; as Garth saj's, it was managed 
with an integrity and disinterest suitable to so charitable a 
design, though the effort sufficed only to make the long stand- 
ing disagreement " break out to fury and excess." The usual 
form of warfare — a paper warfare, emanating from Grub 
Street — arose. There are many references to the controversy, 
even in the more stable writings of the time, and it is apparent 
that most of the men of education outside the profession 
upheld the cause of the Dispensarians. Among them was 
Dryden, as shown by the following lines inscribed to a relative, 
who ' blessed led a country life.' 

The tree of knowledge, once in Eden placed, 
Was easy found, but was forbid the taste; 
0, had our grandsire walked without his wife. 
He first had sought the better plant of life! 
Now both are lost: yet wandering in the dark. 
Physicians for the tree have found the bark; 
They, laboring for relief of human kind, 



Royal Society, and who was then president of the College; of 
Sir Hans Sloane, a later President of the College, who subse- 
quently served in that capacity for sixteen years, and who founded 
the British Museum; of Edward Browne, scholar and traveller, el- 
dest son of the author of the Religio Medici; Robert Brady, 
the historian and friend of Sydenham; Charles Goodall, also a 
later president; Sir Edward Hulse and many others. 

<9) 



with sharpened sight some remedies may find; 
The apothecary-train is wholly blind. 
From files a random recipe they take, 
And many deaths of one prescription make. 
Garth, generous as his Muse, prescribes and gives; 
The shopman sells and by destruction lives; 
Ungrateful tribe! who, like the viper's brood, 
From Medicine issuing, suck their mother's blood! 
Let these obey and let the learned prescribe. 
That men may die without a double bribe; 
Let them, but under their superiors, kill. 
When doctors first have signed the bloody bill : 
He 'scapes the best, who, nature to repair. 
Draws physic from the fields in draughts of vital air.' 

Garth, seemingly, first became an active belligerent in this 
warfare from the vantage ground of his Harveian Oration, 
when, as above mentioned, he took the opportunity of " public- 
ally ridiculing the multifarious classes of quacks, with spirit 
and not without humor." ° Though by nature averse to any 
violent partisanship, his keen mind, ready wit and facile pen 
must have made him a formidable champion for any cause 
which he felt himself called upon to support. " In those old 
days," says Lady Louisa Stewart, " people's brains being more 
active than their fingers, ballads swarmed as abundantly as 
caricatures are swarming at present, and were struck ofl: almost 
as hastily, whenever humor or malice and scurrility formed a 
theme to fasten upon." One of Garth's chance shafts was 
winged at this time against another rhyming physician, Sir 
Eichard Blackmore, who, Saintsbury says, has been made 



'John Dryden. To my Honored Kinsman, ,Iohn Driden, of 
Chesterton, vs. 96-llG. Garth well proved his generosity in 
Dryden's case, as a later incident will show. 

• There is some difference of opinion as to the literary merit 
of this oration. Johnson quotes the single paragraph with 
which he was familiar and adds sarcastically, " this was cer- 
tainly thought fine by the author, etc.," but inasmuch as Garth's 
life was one of the hurried parts of the Biographical Series, 
Johnson doubtless made no effort to read his writings even were 
they accessible to him. Chalmers (Bioo. Dict. 1814) says of this 
speech, " which being soon after published, left it doubtful 
whether the poet or the orator was most to be admired." 

IIO) 



immortal by his satirists '° and seems to have been heartily 
abominated by all for his pomposity and ' amiable faith in 
himself.' Garth, ordinarily charitable enough, especially 
toward his professional brethren and political party, could not 
overlook Blackmore's anti-Dispensarian attitude and to ridi- 
cule him composed the following lines, — " To the Merry 
Poetaster at Sadler's Hall in Cheapside." 

Unwieldy pedant, let thy aukward muse 
With censures praise, with flatteries abuse. 
To lash, and not be felt, in thee'a an art; 
Thou ne'er mad'st any but thy school-boys, sruart. 
Then be advis'd and scribble not again; 
Thou'rt fashion'd for a flail, and not a pen. 

If B I's immortal wit thou would'st descry. 

Pretend 'tis he that writ thy poetry. 
Thy feeble satire ne'er can do him wrong; 
Thy poems and thy patients live not long. 

Poor as they are, there is nothing seriously objectionable in 
the ridicule of these lines and they suffice merely to illustrate 
the form of these poetical duels. The bad taste in twitting 
Blackmore with his early life as a school-master is nothing to 
the vulgarity, even more in accord with the times, which made 
physical infirmities a favorite object of satire. Dr. Garth, 
happily may not be accused of this offence. 

" The Dispensaey." 

GARTH, however, was capable of better things than the 
writing of doggerel verses. There appeared in 1699, 
in broadside paper form after the fashion of the times, 
an anonymous poem in six cantos called The Dispensary, in 
which the history of the attempt to establish gratuitous dis- 



' For example, one of Thomas Moore's epigrams runs: 

'Twas in his carriage the sublime 
Sir Richard Blackmore used to rhyme. 
And if the wits don't do him wrong, 
'Twixt death and epics passed his time 
Scribbling and killing all day long. 

(11) 



pensation of drugs was put into rhyme. The poem had an 
immediate and imexpected success; was soon after printed in 
book form ; went through two other editions before the year 
was out ; and was so widely read during the next two decades, 
when its characters and subject matter were still of public 
interest, that ten authorized and some pirated editions were 
issued. There were several factors which must have contri- 
buted to its success : first among them, the rapidly spreading 
popularity of the author, whose touch must immediately have 
been recognized ; tlie unusual form of versification, also, for 
Garth was among the first to show the influence which Boileau, 
the great French versifier, was to have on English poetry ; pos- 
sibly, too, the curiosity that must have been aroused by the fact 
that so many public characters figured in the poem either 
imder fictitious names or with their actual ones feebly masked 
by hyphenating the consonants." In his preface to the second 
edition, the author states his main purpose in writing the 
poem, for " finding the Animosities amongst the Members of 
the College of Physicians encreasing daily (notwithstanding 
the frequent Exhortations of our Worthy President to the 
contrary) I was persuaded to attempt something of this nature, 
and to endeavor to Eally some of our disaffected Members into 



" In the Spectator (No. 567, July 14, 1714) Addison ascribes 
this particular style of writing, so common in Anne's time, to 
Thomas Brown — the ' I do not love thee Dr, Fell ' Thomas 
Brown — saying, " Some of our authors indeed, when they would 
be more satirical than ordinary, omit only the vowels of a great 
man's name, and fall most unmercifully upon all the consonants. 
This way of writing was first of all introduced by T — m B — wn 
of facetious memory." 

This same Brown, in a broad-side — " Physic lies a Bleeding " — 
published in the heat of the Dispensarian quarrel, had himself 
a fling at the apothecaries! 

Physic lies a Bleeding: or. The Apothecary turned Doctor. A 
Comedy acted almost every Day in most Apothecaries Shops 
in London. And more especially to be seen, by Those who are 
willing to be cheated, the First of April, every year. Absolutely 
necessary for all Persons that are Sick (or) may be Sick. (Quot. 
from Juvenal) by Tho. Brown. Dedicated to that worthy 
and Ingenious Gentleman Dr. J. B. 4to, 1C97. 

(12) 



a sense of their Duty, who have hitherto most obstinately 
oppos'd all manner of Union ; and have continu'd so unreason- 
ably refractory, etc.," much such a purpose as an editorial in 
the Times or Lancet might have served today. 

The poem, mock heroic in kind, opens with a description of 
the College " Eais'd for Use as Noble as its Frame," but in 
which the God of Sloth had made his lair ; disturbed out of his 
lethargy by the enterprize attending the building of the Dis- 
pensary, the slumbering God sends his Phantom to summon 
Envy " to blast their Hopes and baffle their Designs." 

In Canto II, Envy, the famish'd Fiend, rejoicing at the 
task, assumes the form of one Colon (Mr. Lee, Warden of 
Apothecaries Hall) and appears before Horoscope (Dr. 
Bernard) in his apothecary shop, where "Mummies lay most 
reverently stale " etc., and where Horoscope was found en- 
vironed by a crowd of gullible people, promising them future 
Health for present Fees. Into his breast the Fury breathed 
a storm of envy against the Dispensarian movement and left it 
there like a Brood of Maggots to develop. 

Horoscope, in Canto III, through his coadjutor, 'officious 
Squirt,' calls for a meeting of the Apothecaries at their Hall 
in Blackfriars; meanwhile he invokes to their aid the Harpy, 
Disease, " Begot by Sloth, maintain'd by Luxury," through a 
burnt offering of drugs and old proscriptions. Ill omen 
attends this sacrifice. The apothecaries meet; one advocates 
friendly advances to the Faculty; another, a bold fight at 
Honor's call ; another, Askaris, more slyly urged a consulta- 
tion with their friends the disaffected members of the Faculty, 
"who Int'rest prudently to Oaths prefer." The assemblage 
was scattered by an explosion in the laboratory of Apothecaries 
Hall. 

Canto IV. At a tavern near Drury Lane, frequented by 
the apothecaries and where " want of Elbow-room's supply'd 
in Wine," the company again gather, together with some un- 
principled members of the College whom they propose to use 
as their unwilling accomplices as " Boys hatch Game-Eggs 
under Birds o' Prey." There an altercation takes place 
between those advising caution and those clamoring for war. 
It ends in Horoscope being wafted away to the Fortunate 
Isles to consult the Goddess there. In oracular fashion she 
tells him that " Wars must insaie, the Fates will have it so." 
" Dread Fates shall follow, and Disasters great, 
Pills charge on Pills, and Bolus Bolus meet: 
Both sides shall conquer and yet Both shall fall; 
The Mortar now, and then the Urinal." I 

(131 



Canto V. Mirmillo, one of the traitorous physicians, be- 
gins to feel alarm for his safet^y in this alliance and is on the 
point of withdrawing when the Fiiry, Discord, appearing 
before him frightens him into joining the fray. The apothe- 
cary legions meet, the contestants in all manner of armament. 
Thus, Querpo 

" A Pestle for his Truncheon, led the Van 
And his high Helmet was a Close-stool pan." 

Eumor brought the news of the intended attack to Warwick 
Hall where preparations are hurriedly made to receive the 
assault. In mock heroic fashion the clash takes place with 
caustics, emetics, cathartics, syringes and what not, as 
weapons, while " Pestles peal a martial Symphony." 

Canto VI. In the midst of the battle the Goddess of 
Health appears, calls "enough" and bids Machaon (Milling- 
ton, President of the College) send a messenger to the Elysian 
Fields to consult the immortal Harvey as to the best method 
of terminating their woes. Carus (Garth) is chosen for this 
mission and, Dante-fashion, with Hygeia as his guide, he visits 
the lower regions. There, together with all sorts of wondrous 
subterranean phenomena, he sees old Chaos, an awkward 
Lump of shapeless Anarchy, with dull Night, his melancholy 
Consort; pale Fear and dark Distress; parch'd Eye'd Febris; 
bloated Hydrops; meagre Phthisis; Lepra the loathsome; as 
well as other Sights that go to " make up the frightful Horror 
o' the Place." They are at last ferried across the Styx and 
in the delightful Plain, " where the glad Manes of the Bless'd 
remain " the Shade of Harvey is found. The Venerable Sage 
addresses himself to Hygeia on the dissentions of the Faculty 
" Where slck'ning Art now hangs her Hgad, 
And once a Science, is become a Trade." 

He finally turns to her companion, Carus, with the admoni- 
tion, that by attending to Science more, and to Lucre less, and 
by letting Nassau's (that is King William's or England's) 
health be their chief aim, the College could once more become 
restored to the position it held under Willis and Wharton, 
Bates and Glisson. 

A storm of unfriendly criticism was aroused by the first 
appearance of the poem. The design was bad. The execution 
was poor. The best part of the poem was in imitation of 
Boileau's Lutrin " — and much more besides. Garth, however. 



'- Nicolas Boileau, or M. Desprfiau.x as he was usually called In 
the memoirs of the time, was one of the favorite writers of the 

(14) 



in the preface written for the later editions, gracefully disarms 
all of these animadversions of his critics. He was proud of 
the imputation of imitating Boileau and points out the very 
lines in which he had done so ; he defends his scheme on classi- 
cal authority and modestly said, " However, I shall not he 
much concerned not to be thought excellent in an amusement 
I have very little practiced hitherto, nor perhaps ever shall 
again." 

A dedicatory letter addressed to the gifted Sir Anthony 
Henley," appropriately introduces these later editions, for 
Henley, judging from Garth's words must openly have ex- 
pressed his approval of the poem when it first appeared. 
" Your approbation of this poem, is the only exception to the 
opinion the world has of your judgment, etc." 

As was the custom, too, the poem in its later editions, is 
prefaced by commendatory verses by friendly hands." And 



day and his poetry exercised great influence, not only over French, 
but also over later English verse. Lutrin was possibly his best 
poem. There is an interesting allusion to him and to the Sir 
Richard Blackmore referred to above, in Lord Hervey's letters. 
He writes to Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Oct. 28, 1728, " Boi- 
leau can write a Lutrin what one can read with pleasure a thou- 
sand times, and Blackmore cannot write upon the Creation any- 
thing that one shall not yawn ten times over, before one has 
read it once." 

At the hands of his own countrymen Boileau did not escape 
animadversions or at least until Voltaire's mot, " Don't say 
harm of Nicolas, it brings ill-luck," passed into a proverb. 

" Henley is noted for having been ' fed with soft dedications ' 
by authors to whom he had been generous. He was one of the 
foremost wits and was a quasi friend of Swift in so far as the 
Dean could occasionally get a dinner out of him. " He has not 
seen me for some time in the Coffee-house, and asking after 
me, desired Lord Herbert to tell me I was a beast forever, after 
the order of Melchisedec. Did you ever read the Scripture? It 
is only changing the word priest to beast." Journal to Stella. 

"Among them were the Earl of Orrery (C. Boyle) and C. Cod- 
rington. It was Boyle whose struggle with Bentley, the Oxford 
scholar, over some manuscripts led to Swift's " Battle of the 
Books." He was a member of Swift's ' The Club.' Codrington, 

(IS) 



Garth, referring to those that might feel the stiug of his satire, 
says " If I am hard upon anyone, it is my reader : but some 
worthy gentlemen, as remarkable for their humanity as their 
extraordinary parts, have taken care to make him amends for 
it, by prefixing something of their own." 

Of the literary merit displayed in The Dispensary, liberally 
though it was applauded at the time, diverse opinions have 
been given by later critics. All of them, however, are unani- 
mous in according to it an important position through the 
influence that it exercised upon the poetical style which con- 
tinued into the following century.'" Garth seems, as it were, 



a soldier, born in the Barbadoes, friend of the poets, left a large 
library to Christ Church. He says of Garth: 

" Thou hast no faults, or I no faults can spy. 
Thou art all beauty, or all blindness I." 

"Oliver Goldsmith (The Beauties of English Poetry, 1767) com- 
mends highly Canto VI. It is interesting to note that in 1767 he 
was unable to find a first edition. He says " the praises be- 
stowed on this poem are more than have been given to any other; 
but our approbation at present is cooler, for it owed part of its 
fame to party." 

Johnson, in the Lives, characteristically says of Garth, " his 
poetry has been praised at least equally to its merit," and of The 
Dispensary, " no passages fall below mediocrity, and a few rise 
much above it." He continues in a more commendatqry strain; 
" the composition can seldom be charged with inaccuracy or 
negligence. The author never slumbers in self indulgence; his 
full vigor is always exerted, scarcely a line is left unfinished; nor 
is it easy to find an expression used by constraint or a thought 
imperfectly expressed." 

Henry Hallam (Introduction to the Literature of Europe, 1837- 
1839) says, "Garth, as has been observed, is a link of transition 
between the style and turn of poetry under Charles and William, 
and that we find in Addison, Prior, Tickell and Pope during 
the Reign of Anne." 

George Saintsbury (English Poets, 1880, Vol. Ill, p. 13) com- 
ments, " Garth is mainly interesting at the present day because 
he was the first writer who took the couplet, as Dryden had 
fashioned it, from Dryden's hands, and displayed it in the form 
it maintained throughout the Eighteenth Century. In some re- 
spects it may be said that no advance in this particular mode was 



to have introduced Boileau to Alexander Pope and Pope's 
praise of the poem, it will be remembered, was unstinted. In 
The Dunciad appear these lines, 

Be thine, my stationer, this magic gift; 
Cook shall be Prior, and Concanen, Swift; 
So shall each hostile name become our own, 
And we too boast our Garth and Addison. 

and in the foot-notes, — Pope's own, — it is said, " nothing is 
more remarkable than our author's love of praising good 
writings. ... It must have been particularly agreeable to 
him to celebrate Dr. Garth, both as his constant friend and as 
his predecessor in this kind of satire." 

Equally unanimous is the opinion of the later critics, that 
this once celebrated poem after fifty years of celebrity has 
ceased to excite common interest, f To the medical profession, 
however, if not to the community in general, it must always 
remain of historic import, commemorating as it does the first 
attempt to establish those out-patient rooms for the dispensa- 
tion of medicines, which since have become such a universal 
charity. And whatever may be the actual merits of the poem, 
Garth, seemingly with no particular literary ambition, never- 
theless with this single effort placed himself forever high in 
the ranks of the English Poets. There are other physicians 
who have courted the Muses and who, unlike Garth, have 
become renowned more as poets than physicians. Horace 
Walpole, as a rule none too lenient in matters of literary 
criticism, in one of his letters, while most flatteringly com- 
mending some poetry of Dr. Darwin's, continues, " Is it not 
extraordinary, dear Sir, that two of our very best poets. Garth 
and Darwin, should have been physicians? I believe they 
have left all the lawyers wrangling at the turnpike of 
Parnassus . . . ." " 



ever made on The Dispensary. * * * Except for its versification, 
which not only long preceded Pope, but also anticipated Addi- 
son's happiest efforts by some years. The Dispensary is not now 
an interesting poem." 

'" The Letters of Horace Walpole. Cunningham's Ed'n. 1877, 
Vol. IX, p. 372. Letter to Thos. Barrett Esq. May 14, 1792. Cun- 

(17) 



The Dryden Episode. 

A FEW months after Garth had so abruptly stepped into 
his place in the ranks of English poets, there died 
the man who had succeeded Ben Jonson in the post of 
literary dictator and who was to be followed after a fashion 
by Addison, Pope and the great lexicographer in turn. From 
John Dryden, Garth had borrowed the form of couplet which 
he had so improved, and from him Garth, the physician, ' gen- 
erous as his Muse,' had received the immortal tribute of praise 
in verse. It is pouring old wine into new bottles to attempt 
anew the relation of a story, of which so many versions have 
come down to us that it is now difficult to tell wherein lies the 
truth." Authentic, however, seem these facts. John Dryden 
died in the house still standing on Gerrod Street in narrow 
and neglected circumstances on the Mayday of 1700, at three 
o'clock of a Wednesday morning. His body lay in state, 
twelve days later at no less curious a place than the Hall of the 
College of Physicians, where on Monday, May the 13th, Garth 
pronounced his funeral oration and with many others, ' fifty 
carriages of friends and fifty more besides,' attended the body 
to Westminster where it was interred between the graves of 
Chaucer and Cowley in the Poets' Corner. 

Garth is generally considered to have rescued Dryden's body 
from a supposedly ignominious burial, but whatever part he 
may actually have played in the matter, certain it is' that he 
obtained permission from the Board of Censors to allow the 
funeral exercises to be held at the College." Invitations, 
specimens of which are still extant," were issued to attend the 
ceremony at this place. 



ningham's note on this passage says " We had two better poets 
physicians, Akenside and Armstrong; but this Walpole would not 
have admitted." 

" Arbuthnot, in The Gold Headed Cane, tells the story as com- 
monly related, in an imaginary conversation at Mead's. 

"Annals of the College of Physicians; May 3, 1700. 

" They must be very rare. There is no example preserved 
among the archives of the Royal College of Physicians; none in 

(IS) 




H 

K 
m 

O 
o 



d 






'^ 







C/ti 

7^ 



That there is any truth in the wild stor}- of the vexatious 
events that liappened at his funeral, as told in Johnson's Lives 
and elsewhere, there is no trustworthy evidence. Misstate- 
ments, long passing as genuine," were founded on a jocular 
letter by Farquhar, the comic dramatist, addressed to 'his 
Dear Madam,' and a poem ^ by Tom Brown, and were revived 
thirty years later for a monetary consideration, seemingly, by 
the unfortunate Mrs. Thomas ('Corinna'), then a prisoner 
for debt. The sources are equally unreliable. Farquhar, 
indeed, begins the very letter "^ in which his infamous bur- 
lesque appears, with, — •" I was so fuddled, that I hardly 
remember whether I writ or not," — certainly an indifferent 
authority. According to Johnson, who, it must be confessed, 
accepted the story somewhat unwillingly, a private interment 
was to have been held at the expense of Lord Halifax — the 
Maecenas of Garth's day. So on the Saturday following his 
death, the funeral procession with a ' velvet hearse ' was about 
to leave Dryden's door, when Lord Jeaffries with some rakish 
companions, happening by, interrupted the proceedings on 
learning whose private burial it was, promising a large sum 
for a public funeral and a monument in the Abbey. Eeluct- 
antly the company was persuaded to disperse while the body 
was sent to an undertaker's. On the morrow, Jeaffries excused 
his action as part of a drunken frolic. Lord Halifax also, 
naturally disgi'untled, refused to concern himself further with 
the matter after once having had the Abbey lighted and pre- 
pared. The chagrin of the family may be imagined. Their 



the British Museum. A copy recently came under the hammer 
at Sotheby's among some Dryden manuscripts and was secured 
by Mr. Harold Peirce of Philadelphia, to whom I am greatly 
indebted for the accompanying photograph. 

*■ Until refuted by Malone (Miscellaneous Prose Works of John 
Dryden, 1800, pp., 355-382). Sir Walter Scott (Life of John Dry- 
den) also accepted the tale as a romance and gives references 
for those who wish to consult them. 

"" A Description of Mr. D n's Funeral. 

^The Works of Mr. George Farquhar. Edn. IX. Lond., 1760. 
Vol. I, p. 73. 

(19) 



circumstances were such as to make it impossible for them to 
bear the expense of a funeral ; and this is the less to be won- 
dered at when one considers what formidable functions they 
were at this time. At this embarrassing juncture, Garth, as 
Johnson says, " withal a man of generosity and great humanity 
sent for the corpse to the College of Physicians in Warwick 
Lane and proposed a funeral by public subscription to which he 
himself set a noble example." Though the improbability of 
much of this story was pointed out years later by Malone, the 
fact of Dryden's actual interment on the second of May at 
St. Anne's in Soho has only recently come to light by the 
chance discovery of an entry to that eifect in the parish 
register."" The circumstances of the disinterment, of the em- 
balming at Eussel's and of the transfer to the College continue 
to be obscured by uncertainties and the finale of this marvel- 
lous structure of fable as Johnson relates it, is too absurd to 
credit;" that Garth delivered his oration with much good 
nature from the top of a beer barrel the head of which fell in 
during the course of the proceedings; that confusion and 
ribald disorder reigned during the ceremony, at the College, 
at the Abbey, and on the march thither. For all of this we 



""A Burial Mystery. Soho Monthly Paper. June, 1904, p. 143. 
Also, The Athenaeum of July 30. 1904. 

^' Those who wish to peruse this memorable romance will find 
it in Dryden's Works, Vol. XVIII, p. 200. It was first pHblished 
in Wilson's Lite of Congreve, 1730. Mr. Malone has pointed 
out the falsity of the tale in almost all its parts. Independently of 
the extreme improbability of the whole story, it is clear from 
Ward's account, written at the time, that Lord Jeaffries who, it 
is pretended, interrupted the funeral, did, on the contrary, largely 
contribute in helping Garth subsequently to bring it about. 

In a letter from Doctor, afterward Bishop Tanner, dated May 
6th, 1700, quoted by Malone, there appears the following para- 
graph: "Mr. Dryden died a Papist if at all a Christian. Mr. 
Montague had given orders to bury him; but some Lords (my 
Lord Dorset, Jeaffries, et al.) thinking it would not be splendid 
enough, ordered him to be carried to Russel's; there he was em- 
balmed; and now lies in state at the Physician's College and is 
to be buried with Chaucer, Cowley, etc., at Westminster Abbey, 
on Monday next." MSS. Ballard in Bibl. Bodl. Vol. VI, p. 29. 

(20) 



are probably indebted to the fanciful imaginings of the be- 
fuddled Farquhar. It is perhaps worthy of note that Garth's 
share alone of the proceedings did not suffer burlesque from his 
pen for he said, — " The oration indeed was great and ingeni- 
ous, worthy the subject and like the author; whose prescrip- 
tions can restore the living and his pen embalm the dead." 

There is one feature of the ceremony, as related by Thomas 
Heame,^ that deserves passing mention, indicating as it does 
a side of Garth's character of which more will be said anon. 
" Mr. John Dryden, the great poet, was buried in Westminster 
Abbey among the old poets in May, 1700, being carried from 
the College of Physicians, where an oration was pronounced 
by the famous Dr. Garth, in which he did not mention one 
word of Jesus Christ, but made an oration as an apostrophe 
to the great god Apollo, to influence the minds of the auditors 
with a wise, but, without doubt, poetical understanding, and, 
as a conclusion, instead of a psalm of David, repeated the 30th 
ode of the third book of Horace's odes beginning " Exegi 
monumentum, etc."' He made a great many blunders in the 
pronunciation." Hearne is not the only one who has thus 
commented on Garth's apparent irreligion; but why should 
he have been expected to deliver a sermon under those unusual 
circumstances? That the proceedings were dignified cannot 
be doubted and Garth's selection of the Ode to Melpomene, 
which was sung to music, was certainly a fitting and beautiful 
one. 

" I have reared a monument, my own, 

More durable than brass. 

Yea, kingly pyramids of stone 

In height It does surpass." 

It is almost prophetic of the fact that the spot where Dryden 
was interred long remained undistinguished by mark of any 
kind. Not until thirty years later did the Duke of Bucking- 
ham place a tablet there inscribed simply with Dryden's 
name.'" 



"Reliquiae Hearnianae, Edn. Bliss, 1726. Vol. II, p. 267. 
" In his preface to the translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses 
(1717) Garth says of Dryden, "The man, that could make kings 

(21) 



Anne's Eeign axd the Kit-Kat Club. 

A LMOST coincident with Dryden's death and the birth of 
jLJL a new century, Anne came to the throne and with 
her reign began what has been called the Augustan era in 
England. There are, as Goldwin Smith has pointed out, 
certain grounds that substantiate the comparison. Peace, at 
home at all events, for Marlborough's operations leading up 
to Blenheim constituted largely a war of the allies and happily 
a victorious one ; poetry and literature in the persons of Pope, 
Swift, Addison, Steele and DeFoe; the restoration of classical 
learning under Bentley's scholarship ; and statesmen who 
almost with uniformity were patrons of letters. But under- 
neath there was much vulgarity, ignorance and excess. Even 
in literature, good breeding as evidenced by such as Addison 
and Garth, was rare and barely sufficed to safeguard even them 
against the coarse demands of the popular taste. The Queen, 
when she felt so disposed, resumed the practice of touching for 
the evil. Marauders after nightfall, calling themselves 
Mohawks, terrorized the citizens by their depredations, and 
animosities, resultant to party feeling, seem to have been 
almost equally disturbing to the peace. 

The period, too, at least for the fine gentlemen, was one of 
the tavern and coffee-house, where in lieu of the daily press 
the news of the day and the gossip of yesterday were washed 
down, often with so many bottles that the resultant* con- 
vivialit}' commonly saw the day become the morrow. Thus 
ductile people like poor Dick Steele were led to send late 
messengers with lanterns to their Dear Prues, begging them 
to go to bed and promising to come home " within a pint of 
wine," — a bibulous way of recording the hours. 

Many hearsay incidents of these coffee-house festivities 
have come down to lis, some of them hardly acceptable 
to modern ears. Of Garth there are numerous anecdotes, 



immortal, and raise triumphal arches to heroes, now wants a poor 
square foot of stone, to show where the ashes of one of the 
greatest poets, that ever was upon earth, are deposited." 

(22) 



indicative for the most part of his readiness and wit. He was 
sitting one day in the coffee room of the Cocoa Tree Tavern, 
near his home in St. James Street, conversing with two persons 
of quality, when the poet Eowe, a vain fellow, fond of being 
noticed, entered the door. He sat in a box nearly opposite to 
G-arth, looking frequently around in the hope of catching his 
eye. Not succeeding in this, he desired the waiter to ask the 
Doctor for the loan of his snuffbox, which he knew to be a 
rare one, set with diamonds and the gift of royalty. After 
taking a pinch and returning it without Garth's deigning to 
notice him, he sent again for it, and soon again. Finally 
Garth, who knew him well and saw through his purpose from 
the beginning, took out his pencil and wrote on the lid the 
two Greek characters, — $ P — , Fie ! Eowe ! The mortified 
poet ceased his persecutions. 

It was a coffee-house custom for every one to pay his share 
of the entertainment, to contribute his club, as it was ex- 
pressed," and it was not long before this term, coupled with 
some appropriate adjective, became commonly used in desig- 
nation of one or another coterie of friends. Gastronomy was 
at first the chief reason for a club's existence. " Our modem 
celebrated clubs " Addison saj's, " are founded on eating and 
drinking, which are points wherein most men agree." Some- 
what later Dr. Johnson gave his properly indefinite definition 
of " An assembly of good fellows meeting imder certain con- 
ditions." The number of these organizations multiplied 
enormously; many of them, in addition to mere conviviality, 
fostered objects of a more lofty nature, as literature and the 
fine arts. A few of them ultimately developed into powerful 
political machines and of these there are two that continue to 
be of considerable historical interest; one of them made up 



" Thus Swift writes to Stella, Oct. 13, 1710, " The fine fellows 
are always inviting him (young Harrison, the poet) to the 
tavern and make him pay his club. Henley (that is Anthony Hen- 
ley, to whom Garth dedicated The Dispensary) is a great crony 
of his: they are often at the tavern at six or seven shillings 
reckoning, and he always makes the poor lad pay his full share." 

(23) 



largely of active Whig members ; the other, the October Club, 
comprising those desirous of the Stewart succession, the active 
members of the Tory party. 

Garth's Harveian Oration, with its reference to William III, 
had early been the straw to show the direction of his political 
tendencies, and though never a violent partisan at a time when 
political partisanship meant intolerance, his culture, wit and 
elegance doubtless made him a companion eagerly sought for 
by the clique forming the famous Kit-Kat Club, in which, as 
Macaulay says, were gathered all the various talents and 
accomplishments which then gave lustre to the Whig party. 

The early beginnings of this society, its purpose and the 
source from which its name was derived are all shrouded in 
some obscurity.'" It seems probable, however, that Jacob 
Tonson, the celebrated book-seller, one of the dwellers in 
' Little Britain,' was its prime mover ; some have said that for 
selfish reasons he gathered the young and budding wits of his 
own party at his own oxpeuse to the muttou-pie feasts, lioping 
through this association with them to obtain the refusal of 
their youthful publications. Tonson seems to have been no 
more deserving of affection than other piiblishers of his time, 
60 bitterly stung by the ' Wasp of Twickenham ' in the 
Dunciad, especially if we are to judge from the stories of his 



'^ According to Ward, in a curious old boolt, — " The Secret 
History of Clubs " — the name took its origin from Christopher or 
' Kit,' whose tavern, the first place of meeting, was at the Sign 
of the Cat and Fiddle; later on the Club moved with him from 
his original humble surroundings, to the Fountain Tavern in the 
Strand. 

" The Kit-Cat Club came to be so-called from one Christopher 
Catting (a pudding pye -man) with whose puddings and conversa- 
tion the first founders of the society were well pleased." Reli- 
quiae Hearnianae. Edn., Bliss, I, 74. 

In the Spectator, No. 9, Addison, who, being a member, should 
have known, says, — " The Kit-Cat itself is said to have taken 
its original from a mutton-pye." Thus the pies were called kit- 
cats long before the club was so named. 

" The fact is, that on account of its excellence it was called a 
Kit-Cat as we now say a Sandwitch." Malone. 

(24) 



relations with Dryden, a triplet from whose pen portrays him, 
physically at least, in no very favorable light." He had 
acquired wealth partly, it is said, by a lucky stroke in the 
Mississippi Scheme, partly, also, through success in his trade ; 
for during the Whig administration he was stationer, binder, 
book-seller and printer to the Crown. After the change in 
government in 1710, it was largely through his influence that 
the club held together and out of its peaceable origin grew 
into an organization that exerted a powerful influence in 
political affairs. It was no longer at a tavern but at his 
country home in Barn Elms, Surrey, that the meetings ulti- 
mately became held, — 

" One night in seven at ttiis convenient seat 
Indulgent Bocaj (Jacob) did the Muses treat."" 

and it was to decorate their convivium that Godfrey 
Kneller painted the celebrated portraits^' of the members, 
exerting himself, it is said, as he seldom did at other times. 



*With leering looks, bull-faced, and freckled fair. 
With two left legs and .ludas colour'd hair, 
And frowsy pores, that taint the ambient air. 

" Sir Richard Blackmore. The Kit-Cats. A Poem. London H. 
Hills, 1708. 

"^ These portraits in Horace Walpole's opinion, (Anecdotes 
of Painting, Vol. II, p., 204.) possess great sameness and no 
imagination. " See but a head, it interests you — uncover the rest 
of the canvas, you wonder faces so expressive could be employed 
so insipidly." Faint praise indeed; others have not so damned 
them. 

Inasmuch as the room in which these portraits were to be hung 
was quite low, the usual half-length (thirty guinea) size could 
not be used, so that Kneller had to content himself — except in 
the case of his own portrait which was half-length — with the 
head and one hand. Thus it was that this particular size and 
arrangement became known as a ' Kit-Kat portrait.' They meas- 
ured 28 by 36 inches. While they were at Barn Elms mezzotint 
engravings were made of the entire series and were published in 
1723 by Tonson (cf. Frontispiece). They were republished in 
1795 by J. Faber and were reproduced in 1821 in a volume en- 
titled " Memoirs of the Celebrated Persons comprising the Kit- 
Cat Club," — a volume not to be commended for its accuracy of 

(25) 



As described by Steele iu the Tatler, the custom of making 
toasts of the fashionable beauties of the time was peculiar to 
and originated with the society out of which the Kit-Kat Club 
was formed and the scene with which this sketch opened was 
an instance of the annual election. The ' toasts ' were form- 
ally determined by balloting and when elected they reigned, 
says the Tatler, indisputably, like the Doge in Venice. One 
finds mentioned in many a paragraph or letter the names of 
those who were thus forever celebrated by the attention of that 
illustrious gathering. When the ' toasts ' for the year had 
been chosen it was customary for their names to be scratched 
with a diamond on a drinking glass and, ballads being the 
fashion of the day, rhymes were often added as well. Garth 
seems to have had an especial facility for turning out these 
jingles and many of the verses have been attributed to his 
fancy; one illustration, however, will suffice to show what 
doggerel rhymes they were. The stanza is dedicated to Lady 
Hyde, — Prior's Kitty, beautiful and young, — and runs. 

The God of wine grows jealous of his art; 
He only fires the head, but Hyde the heart. 
The Queen of love looks on and smiles to see 
A nymph more mighty than a deity. 

No one would have lamented more than Garth the perpetua- 
tion of such vapid lines as these and on a later occasion he 
excused them as having been spontaneously struck off to meet 
post-prandial demands. They led nevertheless to his being 
designated as the Kit-Kat poet. The whole custom suffered 
ridicule at the hands of Pope or Arbuthnot, one of whom wrote. 



facts. The collection of portraits is said to have been kept intact 
by Tonson's descendants and is now at Bayfordbury in Herts. 
A portrait, supposed however to be Kneller's original Kit-Kat 
portrait, was presented in 1763 by Dr. Chauncey to the College 
of Physicians and now hangs in the Censor's Room at the left 
hand Just as you enter the door. It is certainly a very good 
picture, though possibly a copy. It looks the opposite way from 
the mezzotint which was possibly reversed by the engraver. In 
the national Portrait Gallery there is another portrait supposedly 
by Kneller — a head alone. 

1^6) 



Whence deathless Kit-Cat took its name. 
Few critics can unriddle; 
Some say from pastry-cook it came, 
And some from Cat and Fiddle. 

From no trim beaux its name it boasts, 
Gray statesmen or green wits; 
But from this pell-mell pack of toasts. 
Of old " Cats " and young " Kits." 

There are many stories, oft told, of Garth and his friends 
at these meetings. Some of them are neither credible nor 
creditable. One night while lounging over his wine he was 
jokingly rebuked by Steele for neglecting his patients. " Nay, 
nay, Dick," said he, pulling out his consulting list, " it is no 
urgent matter after all, for nine of them have such bad con- 
stitutions that not all the physicians in the world could save 
them ; and the other six have such good constitutions that all 
the physicians in the world could not kill them." 

After some twenty years of life, together with the thinning 
which death made in the Club's ranks, the gatherings them- 
selves died away. In 1735 Vanbrugh wrote to Tonson, 
" You may believe, when I tell you, you were often talked of, 
both during the journey and at home; and our former Kit-Cat 
days were remembered with pleasure. We were one night 
reckoning who were left, and both Lord Carlisle and Cobham 
expressed a great desire of having one meeting next winter if 
you came to town ; not as a club, but as old friends that have 
been of a club, and the best club that ever met." 

GARTH THE PHYSICIAN AXD FRIEND. 

Whenever Garth shall raise his sprightly song. 
Sense flows in easie numbers from his tongue; 
Great Phoebus in his learned son we see 
Alike in Physic as in Poetry. 

John Gay. Poems 1714. To Bernard Lintot. 

FEW indeed have been the disciples of Aesculapius who have 
climbed ' the severe ascent of high Parnassus ' and at 
the same time been faithful to their vocation. Too often 
has this divided allegiance meant the unqualified sacri- 
fice of Ph3'sic upon tlie shrine of the Corycian nymphs: for 

(2T) 



the public has ever been shy of the physician who allows his 
mind to soar above the level of most practical and mundane 
things, and a genius so inclined, has, in reciprocation, not 
uncommonly failed of success in his profession from an equal 
shyness of the public. As indicated by Gay's lines, such a fate 
was not meted out to Garth, for he continued throughout life 
to be for the members of the Whig party what his equally 
talented contemporary — the author of John Bull — was for the 
Tories; the fashionable and honored medical consultant. 
" Never," says Leigh Hunt, " were two better men sent to 
console the ailments of two witty parties, or show them what a 
nothing party is, compared with the humanity remaining 
under the quarrels of both." Their intolerance of one another 
was said to have been such that a Whig invalid seemed to think 
it impossible that he could derive any benefit from the advice 
of a Tory physician and upon the same principle a Tory 
patient industriously avoided calling on a Whig practitioner. 
Garth, however, much like Addison in his charitableness and 
tolerance, seems to have stood aloof from petty professional 
jealousies and political rivalries and though zealous for and 
constant to his party, yet he was very far from having the 
narrow and malicious spirit, so characteristic of the times, 
and which led, often enough, to hatred of those holding oppo- 
site political beliefs. Even Dr. Johnson acknowledges that 
Garth imparted his kindness equally among those who were 
and those who were not supposed to favor his principles. But 
even had he shared in these rivalries, the change in government 
that followed Anne's death in 1714, with Swift's fall and the 
reinstation of the Whigs, would have placed him on the top 
wave of political preference." 

With the inauguration of the Hanoverian dynasty. Garth 
was made the King's Physician in Ordinary, Physician General 



"Radcliffe, it will be remembered, died a few months after 
Anne (Nov. 1, 1714), having been unable or unwilling to answer 
the call to her bedside; frightened to death, 'twas said, by the 
threats of the Tories, who blamed him for not keeping her 
alive. "You know your doctor (Radcliffe) is gone the way of 
all his patients, and was hard put to it how to dispose of an 

|2S) 



to the Army, and in the same year was knighted with the hero 
of Blenheim's sword, so the story runs ; presumably the famous 
diamond-hilted sword, which in after years Marlborough's 
widow, the celebrated Sarah, plead for in Chancery lest she 
should live to see her profligate grandchild, who had succeeded 
to the title, squander for cash the jewels with which it was 
adorned."'' 

These honors, according to Chalmers, were no more than 
the just rewards of his medical merit though there need be no 
doubt that they were influenced by his known political affilia- 
tions. His social position, his oratorical and poetical success, 
coupled with the philanthropic spirit that led up to the latter, 
possibly, too, the part played in the Dryden incident, as well 
as his natural ability and popularitj', all combined to lead him 
rapidly into an extensive and profitable practice. Gibber says, 
" He had the happiness of an early acquaintance with some of 
the most powerful, wisest, and wittiest men of the age in 
which he lived. He attached himself to a party, which at last 
obtained the ascendant, and he was equally successful in his 



estate miserably unwieldy and splendidly unuseful to him." 
(Pope to Martha Blount.) When Garth learned what disposi- 
tion Radclitfe had made of his property, he said that for him to 
establish a library was as inappropriate as for a eunuch to 
found a seraglio. 

Arbuthnot had been Physician in Ordinary to the Queen— she 
had always been a Tory at heart — and the change in government 
removed him, too, permanently from the political horizon. In 
Swift's correspondence (Unpublished Letters of Dean Swift. 
Birkbeck Hill. 1899) there is a letter from Arbuthnot on "the 
terrible shock " which the Queen's death had given him. " I 
consider myself as a poor passenger; and that the earth is not to 
be forsaken nor the rocks removed from me." Reason enough 
for Arbuthnot's downfall has been given by ' the immortal Tit- 
mouse ' in the description of the part he played in the conspiracy 
to place the young pretender on the throne — he who preferred 
Beatrice to the crown. 

" " That sword," said she, " that sword, my Lord would have car- 
ried to the Gates of Paris. Am I to live to see the diamonds 
picked off one by one and lodged at the pawn-brokers? " Intro- 
ductory Anecdotes. Stewart. 

(29) 



fortune as his friends. Persons in these circumstances are 
seldom praised, or censured with moderation." In 1702, 
Garth became a Censor of the College, practising always, 'tis 
said, ' in strict regard to the honor and interest of the faculty ; 
never stooping to prostitute the dignity of his profession 
through mean and sordid views of self interest by courting 
even the most popular and wealthy apothecaries ' — a stand 
which contrasts badly with the story of Mead, the succeeding 
luminary in the medical sky, and his half guinea prescriptions. 
In strong contrast also to Mead's predecessor in possession of 
the Gold Headed Cane, does Garth stand out as one who en- 
deared himself to his patients as well as to his friends by his 
politeness, accomplishments and consideration. He was one 
who knew that the 

Same nerves are fashion'd to sustain 

The greatest pleasure and the greatest pain. 

The Dispensary. Canto i. 

In contemporary writings there are many references to his 
professional skill and reputation. Lady Mary Wortley Mon- 
tague writes in 1714 to her husband, " But I should be very 
glad if you saw Dr. Garth if you would ask his opinion con- 
cerning the use of cold baths for young children," and again, 
" I hope the child is better than he was but I wish you would 
let Dr. Garth know — he has a bigness in his joints, but not 
much; his ankles seem chiefly to have a weakness. I should 
be very glad of his advice upon it and whether he approves 
rubbing them with spirits, which I am told is good for him." 
In the collected works of the notorious Mr. Thomas Brown 
appears the following epistle addressed: 

TO Doctor Garth: 
Whether your letter or your prescriptiou has made me 
well, I protest I cannot tell; hut this much I can say. That 
as the one was the most nauseous thing I ever knew, so 
the other was the most entertaining. I would gladly ascribe 
my cure to the last; and if so, your practice will become so 
universal you must keep a secretary as well as an apothecary. 
The observations I have made are these: that your prescrip- 
tion staid not long with me, but your letter has, especially 
that part of it where you told me I was not altogether out 

(30) 



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/.Kf^im.nf «/!<„)» ™t 97?^t-t-i ////"^ by Veitue and 
Anno 1716. in rurliumce or an Act lately palied m 

Parliament, (Entituled, An Act for Granting 
an Aid to Ili<s Majcjly, by a Land-Tax in 
Great Britain, for the Service of the Year 
1716.) Th.it you deliver and pay of flich 
His Mjelty's Treafure as remains in your 
Charge, arifing^ by Vertiie of the faid 
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or /f/j Afligns, the Sum of bva 



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in Repayment of the like Sumhy /^>'/'' lent 
upon Credit of the faid Ad, and paid into 
the Receipt of His Majcity's Exchequer 
the faid <«^y ■'^Day of "^6 ^ /// 5 ' 
as by a Talley bearing Date the lame Day 
appears ; together \vich Interelt for the 
fame, after the Rate of Six Pounds/^rr^t'/n*.' 
per Jnmmi, at the Hnd of every Three 
Months, from the Date of the faid IV.l- 
Icy, until the Repayment of the Principal, 
And thefe, together with /^V "" or z?^. - 
Alligns Acquittance, fhall be your Dif- 
charge herein -^j] 



of your memory; you'll find me much altered in everything 
when you see me, but in my esteem for yourself: I that was 
as lank as a crane when I left you at London, am now as 
plump as an ortolan. I have left off my false calves, and had 
yesterday a great belly laid to me. A facetious widow, who 
is my confident in this affair, says you ought to father the 
child; for he that lends a man a sword is in some part acces- 
sory to the mischief is done with it; however, I'll forgive you 
the inconvenience you've put me to. I believe you were not 
aware you were giving life to two people. Pray let me have 
a consolatory letter from you upon this new calamity; for 
nothing can be so welcome, excepting rain in this sandy 
country where we live. The widow saith, she resolves to be 
sick on purpose to be acquainted with you; but I'll tell her 
she'll relish your prescriptions better in full health, and it at 
this distance you can do her no service, pray prescribe her 

Your humble Servant. 

And so the Churchills, and Lady Hervey — beautiful Molly 
Lepel — the Walpoles and others among those, who, through 
their letters, are still well known to us, despite the gap of 
almost two hundred years, often make mention of Garth the 
Aesculapian as well as of Garth the companion. But intimate 
as he seems to have been with those who were socially and po- 
litically among the great, his benevolence and true profes- 
sional kindliness toward the needy seems in no way to have 
suffered. His reputation for charitableness, as one learns 
from many sources, was well deserved. " No physician knew 
his art more nor his trade less." 

Poor Dick Steele never forgot his own indebtedness to 
Garth. He dedicated his play, The Lover, to him, saying, 
" The pitiful artifices which empyrics are guilty of, to drain 
cash out of valetudinarians, are the abhorrence of your gener- 
ous mind; and it is as common with Garth to supply indigent 
patients with money for food, as to receive it from wealthy 
ones for physic." And, hardly in accord with the story of the 
consultation list related above, Steele says farther on, " This 
tenderness interrupts the satisfaction of conversation, to which 
you are so happily turned ; but we forgive you that our mirth 
is often insipid to you, while j^ou sit absent to what passes 
amongst us, from your oare of such as languish in sickness. 

(31) 



We are sensible that their distresses, instead of being removed 
by company, return more strongly to your imagination, by 
comparison of their condition with the jollities of health. But 
I forget I am writing a dedication * * * _" 

The best of all of Steele's tribuies to his friend and physi- 
cian I cannot help quoting still more at length. The genuine 
and warm-hearted gratitude which it displays as well as the 
gracefully indirect method in which this has been expressed 
make it an acknowledgment of services such as even the most 
deserving rarely receive. In the Tatler, No. 78, Saturday, 
October 8, 1709, Isaac Bickerstaff records that he has received 
the following letter : 
" Sir, 

I am just recovered out of a languishing sicltness by 
the care of Hippocrates, who visited me throughout my 
whole illness, and was so far from taking any fee, that 
he inquired into my circumstances, and would have re- 
lieved me also that way, but I did not want it. I know 
no method of thanking him, but recommending it to you 
to celebrate so great humanity in the manner you think 
fit, and to do it with the spirit and sentiments of a man 
just relieved from grief, misery and pain, to joy, satisfac- 
tion and ease; in which you will represent the grateful 
sense of your obedient servant, 

I. B." 

" I think the writer of this letter has put the matter in 
as good a dress as I can for him; yet I cannet but add 
my applause to what this distressed man has said. There 
is not a more useful man in the commonwealth than a 
good physician, and, by consequence, no worthier a per- 
son than he that uses his skill with generosity even to 
persons of condition, and compassion to those who are in 
want: which is the behavior of Hippocrates, who shows 
as much liberality in his practice, as he does wit in his 
conversation, and skill in his profession. A wealthy doc- 
tor, who can help a poor man, and will not without a fee, 
has less sense of humanity than a poor ruffian who kills a 
rich man to supply his necessities. It is something mon- 
strous to consider a man of a liberal education tearing at 
the bowels of a poor family, by taking for a visit what 
would keep them a week. Hippocrates needs not the com- 
parison of such extorsion to set off his generosity, but I 
mention his generosity to add shame to such extorsion." 

(32) 



Many years later when writing of Garth in his Lives of 
the Poets, Johnson, as will be remembered, was led for simi- 
lar reasons and in like vein, to pay the medical profession one 
of the most appreciated bits of praise it has ever received. 
" Whether what Temple says be true, that physicians have had 
more learning than the other faculties, I will not stay to en- 
quire ; but I believe every man has found in physicians great 
liberality and dignity of sentiment, very prompt effusion of 
beneficence and willingness to exert a lucrative art, where 
there is no hope of lucre." " 

Character and Private Life. 

IT is regrettable that we have so little information, beyond 
that conveyed by anecdote, of Garth's private life ; regret- 
table too that much of what we know serves merely to in- 
dicate the character of the day rather than of the individual. 
The customs, the fashions, the morals were not our own and 
our judgment upon them must be given with a light hand. 
Tliere are some things held up against him — notably irreligion 
and libertinism — which only the coarseness of the times en- 
ables us to excuse as being less bad in him than in the company 
he kept. Garth's own reflection upon Ovid's writings, we may, 
however, appropriately turn u|)on his o^n character. He says. 



"It Is interesting to note that Boswell quoted this paragraph 
in the letters to Cullen, Munro and Hope of the Edinburgh School, 
when he appealed to them for advice in Johnson's last illness. 
To which letter and " its venerable object, all of them paid the 
most polite attention " as would have been expected even without 
the quotation. 

Through the many illnesses of his life as well as in this last 
one, had Johnson been considerately cared for by many distin- 
guished medical men. " A few days after his departure. Dr. 
Brocklesby and Mr. Cruikshank who with great assiduity and 
humanity (and I must add generosity for neither they, nor Dr. 
Heberden nor Warren, nor Dr. Butler would accept any fees) 
had attended him, signified a wish that his body might be 
opened." G. Birkbeck Hill; Johnsonian Miscellanies. 1897. Vol. II, 
p. 136.) 

(33) 



" It must be granted that when there appears an infinite 
variety of inimitable excellences, it would be too harsh and 
disingenuous to be severe on such faults, as have escap'd rather 
thro' want of leisure, and opportunity to correct, than thro' 
the erroneous turn of a deprav'd judgment." 

During his early life in London, Garth is said to have 
resided in hiunble quarters in the Haymarket — according to 
the Rate Books of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, ' on the East 
side six doors from the top.' It was in a garret of this same 
street that Addison lived when he wrote The Campaign, the 
poem that started his political fortune rolling, and it is quite 
probable tliat both of them were among the distinguished 
company present at the laying of the corner .stone of the 
Queen's Theatre — now the Haymarket Opera House — designed 
by their friend Vanbrugh. Another bystander was the much 
abused laureate Colley Gibber, who subsequently wrote, " of 
this theatre I saw the first stone laid on which was inscribed 
THE LITTLE WHIG in honor of a lady of extraordinary 
beauty, then the celebrated Toast and Pride of that party." 
This was Lady Sunderland, Marlborough's second daughter, 
and it was to her and Vanbrugh that Garth refciTed in the 
line, " By beauty founded and by wit designed," which occurs 
in his Prologue, subsequently read at the formal opening of 
this famous Opera House." 

In the same year — 1705 — Garth removed to more fashion- 
able quarters, to St. James in fact, where he resided near his 
friends the Churchills, whose particular favor and esteem he 
always enjoyed. Here he was married to Martha, the daugh- 
ter of Sir Henry Beaufoy, and here, so far as is known, he 
continued to dwell until later in life a country home at Har- 
row-on-the-Hill was taken by him for Lady Garth and Martha, 
his only daiighter. 

Though his professional labors must have kept him much in 
town, his affection for ' The Hill ' where many delightful 



"■ The Haymarket Opera House opened April 9, 1705, with a 
performance of Dryden's ' Indian Emperor.' 



social hours were passed with his friends, was such that he 
determined it sliould be his final resting place and a vault was 
prepared in the church for the purpose." 

The visitations between neighboring country houses, then 
as now, were many and Garth's companionship, whether as 
guest or entertainer, must have been eagerly courted. " On 
the morrow I am engaged to go to Harrow-on-the-Hill with 
company," writes Pope in a note to Kneller, and in return we 
find Garth at the Twickenham Grotto, whence Pope sends 
word to Lady Mary Wortley Montague (October, 1717), who 
is still in Constantinople and still an object of Pope's fickle 
admiration, — " Dr. Garth makes epigrams in prose when he 
speaks of j'ou." It is perhaps but another evidence of that de- 
sirable quality for which Garth was so distinguished — his 
good nature — that his friendships endured so long. It is a 
quality to which so many allusions are made and with such a 
unanimity of opinion that one would weary of it were it not 
for the realization that two hundred years ago the designation 
had a widely different meaning from that into which it has 
now become corrupted — with a suggestion of complaisance and 
the mental inactivity that accompany ready adjustment to the 
moods of others, and that too often belong to a wearisome 
though amiable personality. Of all his contemporaries not even 
Addison seems to have been so universally liked. In Steele's 
dedication, from which I have already so freely borrowed, he 
says, " As soon as I thought of making the Lover a present to 
one of my friends, I resolved without distracting my choice to 
send it to the Best Natured Man. You arc so universally 



^' In Hay's Religio Philosophi the circumstances of Garth's 
ordering a vault for himself and his wife in Harrow Church is 
spolien of as the result of some accidental whim. His will is 
dated 20th May 1717; and his property including Edgecott in 
Bucks he bequeaths to his daughter, Martha Beautoy Boyle 
(Cunningham). This will was made shortly after the death 
(May 1st, 1717) of Lady Garth, he being himself in ill health at 
the time. The daughter had become the wife of Col. William 
Boyle, son of the Hon. Col. Henry Boyle, uncle of the last Earl 
of Burlington of that name. 

l35) 



known for this character, that an epistle so directed would find 
its way to you without your name; and I believe nobody but 
yourself would deliver such a superscription to any other 
person." 

The adulation of soft dedications of the 18th century must 
of course be taken into account in this eulogy, though there 
need be little doubt of the geniiineness of Steele's feeling; but 
there were others notoriously of less kindly instincts who had 
the same regard for Garth. Eminent among them was "he, 
who hardly drank tea without a stratagem."' Garth's friend- 
ship with Pope began when the latter w^as a mere boy and 
althoUjgh Arbuthnot and Swift may at one time have been his 
closer intimates, nevertheless cordial relations with Garth 
were continued with a constancy which the younger man rarely 
exhibited. The ease with which Pope's animosities were 
aroused on seemingly the most trivial grounds makes it all 
the more creditable that Garth remained among the few who 
first or last sufi^ered in no way from the stings of the poet's 
satire. His ' Pastorals ' were written by the stripling minstrel 
of Binfield when only sixteen and the second of them — Sum- 
mer — ^was dedicated to Garth." 

So later, in his ' Epistle to Arbuthnot,' he refers to Garth's 
early encouragement of his work in the lines — 

'■ But why then publish? Granville the polite 
And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write; 
Well natured Garth, inflamed with earthly praise: 
And Congreve lov'd, and Swift endur'd by lays." 

Good reason indeed had he to feel gratitude toward this 
patron of his youth, if we are to credit — as we should, for it 
comes through the Eev. Jos. Spence from Pope's own lips — the 
story of how Garth with Addison and Congreve brought him 
before Lord Halifax for a reading of the first sections of his 
translation of the Iliad, how his Lordship criticised several 



" Of this, Wharton says, " It is unfortunate that this second 
pastoral, the worst of the four, should be inscribed to the best of 
all Pope's four friends to whom they were addressed " — to Sir 
Wm. Trumbull, Garth, Mr. Wycherley and Mrs. Tempest. 

136) 



passages, requesting that they be altered and how Garth, who 
took Pope home in his chariot, laughed at his embarrassment 
and told him to leave them as they were, but to thank his Lord- 
ship and then go and read them again to him after a few 
months, which he did to the gratification of Lord Halifax who 
cried out, "Ay now, Mr. Pope, they are perfectly right! 
Nothing can be better." 

During their town life they were found together at Button's 
Coffee House, where they were immortalized by Hogarth's 
pencil,"' and they continued to fraternize after Pope left the 
dear, damn'd distracting town to pass the remainder of ' that 
long illness, his life,' at Twickenham. And there Garth, no 
longer needed as literary patron, probably did more to en- 
courage the poet's feeble body than his verse. Indeed the 
tables were so turned, that Pope became the advocate of his 
friend's Muse, announcing to Richardson " that there was 
hardly an alteration in The Dispensary of the innumerable 
ones through every edition that was not for the better; and 
that he took Garth to be one of the few truly judicious au- 
thors." For Garth did not live up to his threat of writing no 
more. The most pretentious as well as tlie last work iu 
which he engaged was the editing of a beautiful great folio 
of Ovid's Metamorphoses." Of this Wharton says, "About 
this time it became fashionable among the mts at ' Button's,' 
the mob of gentlemen that wrote with ease, to translate Ovid. 
Their united performances were published in form by Garth, 
with a preface written in a flowery and lively style, but full 
of strange opinions." And soon after its appearance Pope 
wrote to Curyll, August 6, 1717,—" Dr. Garth has published 
a translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses by several hands with 



=•* I do not know, in this slietcti, who can be the third person 
who stands by the table at the artist's right. Another similar 
sketch, also atrributed to Hogarth, is reproduced in B. W. 
Richardson's Disciples of Aesculapius. In this one a figure, un- 
doubtedly Arbuthnot, appears sitting between Garth and Pope. 

" You may know Arbuthnot because he can only sit," says 
Swift, in the Journal to Stella. 

"•Published by J. Tonson in 15 books, 1717. 

(37) 



a preface and a dedication in a new fashion. Folio, price 30s. 
I advise you to borrow it." Between The Dispensary, liis first, 
and this, Garth's last literary venture, there appeared several 
minor poems, one of which must needs be mentioned, aa an 
incident arising from it seems to show how well the author 
deserved his epithet of good nature. In 1710 when the Gov- 
ernment changed hands, Garth wrote a short poem of kindly 
address dedicated to Lord Godolphin on the reverse of his 
political fortunes. In the Tory paper, the Examiner, No. 6, 
tliis poem was attacked by Prior, not only for its sense but for 
its versification and with all the outrage of party virulence. 
Garth had poise enough not to retaliate, but his satisfaction 
must have been great at the appearance of an unanswerable 
defence made for him by Addison, who concluded by observing 
that " the same person who has endeavored to prove that he 
who wrote The Dispensary was no poet, will very suddenly 
undertake to show that he who gained the battle of Blenheim 
was no general." 

With like restraint Garth had not deigned to reply to the 
accusation of an earlier time that The Dispensary was really 
the product of another's pen, a slander, raised by the envy of 
authorship, that would now be forgotten were it not for Pope's 
lines : 

With him most authors steal their works, or buy; 
Garth did not write his own Dispensary. 

Essay on Criticism. 

It was the lack of just such good nature that led to the sorry 
breach between Addison and Pope, which arose out of the 
Jealousies engendered by Pope's and Tickell's translations of 
the Iliad. We find the fat, cringing Gay adding fuel to the 
fire in a letter addressed to Pope, July 8, 1715 : — 

" I have just set down Sir Samuel Garth at the Opera. 
He bids me tell you that everybody is pleased with your 
translation but a few at Button's; and that Sir Richard 
Steele told him that Mr. Addison said Tickell's transla- 
tion was the best that was ever in any language. He 
treated me with extreme civility, and out of kindness 
gave me a squeeze by the forefinger. I am informed that 

(38) 



■^r^' 



3 •♦ 



o 



te 



ex, 

c 



?1 




ill 



i^^ 



at Button's your character is made very free with as to 
morals etc., and one Mr. A(ddison) says that your trans- 
lation and Tickell's are both very well done, but the lat- 
ter has more of Homer. I am etc." 

The extreme civility Garth doubtless gave to all, but his 
companion deserved it little more than the squeeze by the 
forefinger. 



I 



Garth's Eeligion, Illness and Death. 

T must have seemed odd to all who have interested them- 
selves in Garth's life that, considering the scant notes 
which are accessible, there is so much said on the subject 
of his religion or irreligion. It naturally brings to mind the 
sorry publicity thrust 150 years later upon the beliefs of 
another a^ostic, to whom might also be applied the sentiment 
in Pope's oft repeated statement that " if ever there was a good 
Christian without knowing himself to be so it was Dr. 
Garth." " His presumed hostility to every form of Christian 
faith seems to have been due partly to the irregularity of the 
exercises at Dryden's funeral, over which he presided, as well 
as to an early epitaph on St. Evremond, accredited to him and 
intended for Westminster Abbey, in which he commended him 
for his indifference to all religion. It does not seem to have 
been Garth's practice, however, to parade his personal beliefs 
or disbeliefs, for the tale has come down to us that being one 
day questioned by Addison upon his religious creed, he replied 
that he was of the religion of wise men, and being asked to 
explain himself further, he added that wise men kept their 

" The same expression Pope put in verse when, shortly before 
Garth's death, he wrote his farewell to London "Dear, damn'd 
distracting town, farewell." 

" Farewell Arbuthnot's raillery 
On every learned sot; 
And Garth, the best good Christian he, 
Altho' he knows it not." 

Here in the same stanza Pope links his two distinguished 
medical friends — Tory and Whig. 

(39) 



own secrets. Whatever may liave been these secrets, his friends 
knew that, as his days became numbered, doubt and uncertain- 
ties arose in his mind and as he neared the end Addison made 
a futile effort to console him with the hope of a life here- 
after, but was turned off with the reply that the doctrines of 
Christianity were incomprehensible. If, however, we are to 
believe the story which came from Mr. Blount, the father of 
Pope's Martha, to Pope, and through him to be recorded 
among the first of Spence's anecdotes, he repented this attitude 
on his deathbed. " It was usual for him to say : ' That if 
there was any such thing as religion 'twas among the Eoman 
Catholics.' Probably from the efficacy we give the sacraments. 
He died a Papist; as I was assured by Mr. Blount, who carried 
the Father to him in his last hours." He did not take any 
care of himself in his last illness; and had talked for three or 
four years as though tired of life; in short, I believe he was 
willing to go." 

Indeed, not only did he take no care of himself in his last 
illness, but he actually essayed to have his end hurried, if we 
are to place further credence on the hearsay anecdotes of the 
time. I cannot do better than quote again from Spence, who 
says: 

When Dr. Garth had been for a good while in a bad state 
of health, he sent one day for a physician with whom he was 
particularly intimate and conjured him by their friendship 
and by everything that was most sacred (if there was any- 
thing more sacred), to tell him sincerely whether he thought 
he should ever be able to get rid of his illness or not. His 
friend, thus conjured, told him that he thought that he might 
struggle on with it perhaps for some years, but that he much 
feared that he would never get the better of it entirely. 
Dr. Garth thanked him for dealing so fairly with him, turned 
the discourse to other things and talked very cheerfully all 
the rest of the time he staid with him. As soon as he was 
gone, he called for his servant, said he was a good deal out of 
order and would go to bed; he then sent him for a surgeon 



■" On which Johnson observes that " a mind wearied with per- 
petual doubt willingly seeks repose in the bosom of an infalli- 
ble Church." 

(40) 



to bleed him. Soon after he sent for a second surgeon, by a 
different servant, and was bled in the other arm. He then 
said he wanted rest, and when everybody had quitted the 
room, he took off the bandages and lay down with the design 
of bleeding to death. His loss of blood made him faint 
away, and that stopped the bleeding; he afterwards sunk into 
a sound sleep, slept all the night, waked in the morning 
without his usual pains, and said if it would continue so he 
would be content to live on. 

It was perhaps this acknowledged attempt to speed the end 
of his svifferings, coupled with the playful remark accredited 
to him that he was glad he was d3dng, for he was weary of 
having his shoes pulled on and off, which led " ill tongues and 
worse hearts," as Pope said, " to brand even his last moments 
as wrongfully as they did his life with irreligion." Can we 
not commiserate him? A physician who held not the lay- 
man's fear of death ; wifeless, for Lady Garth had been buried 
at Harrow the year before; not having the solace brought by 
religious faith ; and doomed to linger on with a painful illness. 
It was a Baconian saying that man fears not being dead, but 
only the stroke of death; but to Garth and many others of his 
kind, necessarily familiar with death, not even the event is 
fearful — Garth's " friendly stroke." 

To die is landing on some silent shore 

Where billows never beat, nor tempests roar. 

Ere well we feel the friendly stroke, 'tis o'er. 

The Dispensary. 

Memorable are the words of William Hunter to Dr. Combe. 
" If I had strength enough to hold a pen, I would write how 
easy and pleasant a thing it is to die." 



Beautiful as the view still remains, the pointed spire of 
St. Mary's of Harrow-on-the-Hill no loUiger looks out, as in 
Garth's day, on unbroken woodland and country side, but on 
the smoke and roofs of approaching London, apart from whose 



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oJT^ 



strife and turmoil he had hoped forever to rest. Forgotten 
and half hidden by some modem furnishings, in the corner 
of the chancel one may find a large gray flag stone, on which 
a part at least of this simple inscription may still be read : 

IN THIS VAULT LIES TE BODY 

OF TE LADY GARTH LATE WIFE 

OF SAMUEL GARTH, KT. 

WHO DYED TE 1 OF MAT, 

IN YE TEAR 1717. 

SIR SAMUEL GARTH 
OBIIT JAN. THE 18, 1718. 



(42) 



LBAp'09 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Dale: March 2009 

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